If this was a charter school the teacher unions would be frothing at the mouth with “I told you so”…

by Cameron Slater on June 26, 2017 at 5:30pm

If this was a Charter School the NZEI (it has Year 7 & 8) and PPTA would be all over it and Labour would be bringing in volunteers from overseas to ring up the public and tell them about it.

The Hokitika school came under limited statutory management in March following a vote of no confidence by teaching staff in Mr Jones as principal. The statutory manager was appointed to take over most of the functions of the board of trustees, while Mr Jones remains principal. The pupils said the school was “dramatically understaffed”.

“Many subjects are simply not available to do as we lack the staff to teach them. There has been more than one occasion where our Year 13s have had to help relief teachers who are obviously distressed in the position they were put in, or even help classes without teachers.”

The lack of a careers adviser had left senior students without advice or support, school operations day-to-day seemed “so difficult” pupils were often left scrambling to get permission slips and often they were not informed about school events “until generally the day before”.

The loss of the peer support programme for Year 7 pupils was another let-down, while the request for a home room teacher had been “completely disregarded” and had left a situation where at least one classroom was now “unsafe” for pupils.

“There are so many fights and conflicts throughout this year group that it raises the question, is it actually safe for these younger members to attend school? This is something that should be directly addressed and not just swept under the carpet.”

The Ministry clearly can’t fix it.

The buck stops with them on a State school failing.

Maybe the smart move would be to get one of the current successful Charter organisations to take over situations like this.

-NZ Herald

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.